EscobarbPong
Escobarb
Realistic Records

Any disquisition on electronic geek-rockers Pong is required by Austin municipal law to include the name Ed Hall: the post-punk trio that accepted the Weird torch from the Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid just before the grunge explosion was entirely subsumed within Pong at the newer band's inception in 1999. The arithmetically and historically gifted will note, however, that the descendant surpassed the ancestor a couple of years back; it's true, Pong has now been a band longer than Ed Hall was. In other news, you are old.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, Ed Hall was the band playing in the background during the bar scene in Slacker. For those who still aren't following, let's just say that I have it on good authority that Austin used to be cool.

Despite Pong's 11-year run, Escobarb is only the band's third CD, and its first release since 2005's Bubble City. The band seems to be mellowing further and further as the years go by, and the sharper edges of Bubble City have been dulled a bit. The music, solid and appealing as ever, relies less on guitar, striking an impressively tasteful balance between '70s experimentation, '80s synth-driven fun, and '90s irony. More importantly, Escobarb significantly downplays the explicit satirical and nonconformist tendencies that gave Bubble City its bite. The band seemingly stabs at engagement only obliquely in "Umbrella" and the title track, largely contenting itself with random clever oddities. Space fetishism ("Rocket Fuel," "Sunshine," "Laika") seems to be a topic of particular interest.

This is fine as far as it goes. Indeed, the surprisingly robust genre of sci-fi party-rock is largely built on the timeless appeal of the amusing non sequitur, and Escobarb's best songs, like "Superwrong" and the wonderfully game "Suicide Cat," make gleeful hay of lyrical tropes that are, to all appearances, meaningless or close to it. However, to make their absurdist lyrics stick, the B-52s had visionary music, Devo had savvy culturejamming, and Man or Astroman, Servotron and the Causey Way had an unswerving commitment to their ridiculous fake backstories. By comparison, there's not much of an idea motivating Pong's music, and as a result it sometimes comes off as weirdness for its own sake -- something that Pong, as good as they are, just doesn't have the attitude to pull off. I'm sorry to say it, but Ed Hall had that in spades.

Pong performs at Super Happy Fun Land on Friday. One Man Machine & the Powers That Be! and Fiskadoro are also on the bill.